Hangin' at Hatch St. Studios

The Hatch St. Studios in New Bedford are in an old brick mill building, two floors of which are occupied by artists and craftspeople. Every year they do their holiday show just after Thanksgiving and I've been lucky enough to be invited the past five years. I share space in the big, airy and bright studio of furniture maker Mike Pietragalla. Mike makes beautiful Craftsman-inspired furniture and listens to a lot of Beatles music.
The three-day show this year was not as lucrative as past years, which is worrisome. It's always hard to tell whether the economy is bad (which it is), whether the weather is keeping people inside or outside (hard to say on that one), or whether I'm just not making pots that those folks want to buy (another question impossible to answer). You can make yourself crazy trying to figure out why things are not selling. I should add that another potter on the floor below us seemed to do well, so this may just not be my crowd.
Income aside, the two floors are filled with good people, most of whom I see only once or twice a year, at this show and perhaps one other. Potter and painter Kim Barry and I always trade work when we do shows together. She has a growing collection of my bowls (that's Kim with a very nice Shino/ash glazed bowl, which is now in her kitchen) and Dee and I have a number of her beautiful tiles of fish and vegetables. (Look for Kim's earthenware flowerpots in the new Sherlock Holmes film that opens this month; she'll be looking, too. She supplied them, but doesn't know for sure if they were used.)
Sheilagh Flynn makes very nice functional ware in her studio on the floor below. Sarah Peters does stunning bronze work. Huguette May is across the hall, doing massive black-and-white drawings of old rope. And painters Pat Kellogg and Michael Hecht always have good artichoke dip and wonderful paintings next door to Mike. This year, muralist M-C Lamarre shared Mike's studio, too, dancing, laughing and selling her photographs of Boston's Fenway Park. M-C cooked barbecued pulled pork for our Sunday lunch and I made fairly fiery barbecue sauce.
It's a great place, full of good people and good art and worth visiting.
Here's a list of websites for some of the artists at Hatch St.:
- Huguette May, at huguettemay.com
- M-C Lamarre, at mclamarre.com
- Mike Pietragalla, at floatingstonewoodworks.com
- Kim Barry, at claytroutpottery.com
- Pat Kellogg, at http://www.hatchstreetstudios.com/artists/patkellogg/index.html
- Sheilagh Flynn, at http://www.newbedfordopenstudios.org/Sheilagh_Flynn.html
- Nicole St. Pierre (textiles) at, http://www.newbedfordopenstudios.org/Nicole_St._Pierre.html
- Marc St. Pierre (paintings, prints and photography), at http://www.newbedfordopenstudios.org/Marc_St._Pierre.html